Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Reviews

The first Home Alone is very good indeed. The last two are just wannabes and feel like they don't belong. Home Alone 2 is my personal favourite, and I watch it about once a month. The only problem is that the jokes are basically retreads of the first movie, but believe me, they're miles better than the ones in the fourth ( which is one of the worst movies ever) This is still a very solid film, that gets slow in the second half. The performances are excellent. Macaulay Culkin brought a lot of charm to almost all the movies he's been in. Just a shame, he isn't acting any more. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are hilarious, as always. Catherine O'Hara and John heard are amiable as the parents, while the wonderful Tim Curry gives a hilarious performance as the Concierge. My favourite scenes were the bathroom scene in the hotel, and when the staff are held hostage by a television. Just priceless. Eddie Bracken and Brenda Fricker also make appearances, and their scenes are touching, as they are of friendship and acceptance. I absolutely adored the soundtrack too, New York looks splendid and the Plaza Hotel was incredible to look at. Brilliant movie! 9/10. Bethany Cox

I loved the first 2, we watch them a few times a year & always at Christmas as well, 2 was actually funnier than the original, the shower scene was hilarious & the second one was even better, both are in my top ten movies of all time! Never ceases to make me laugh!

In 'Home Alone', Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) was left home alone when his parents and his many siblings went on vacation. He had to defend the house from burgulars. A year later, he gets lost in New York and the same burgulars are chasing after him.

'Home Alone 2: Lost In New York' features an overdose of slapstick and lack of good comedy. The beginning is mediocre with some weird gags which despite that are still actually bareable. But then Kevin sexually harrasses a woman (yes, I forgot I was watching a kids movie) and drops bricks on Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) exposing their blood.

The whole criminal scene didn't amuse me at all and was full of inappropriate jokes including being shot in inappropriate areas and bricks exposing blood. There is, in particular, a brief scene where one of the criminals tries to get something electric to work and he turns to a skeleton, that may give kids nightmares!

'Home Alone 2' is the movie that features not just an overdose of slapstick but also inappropriate slapstick! And if you have younger kids, just show them something made by Pixar. I didn't care much for 'Home Alone', I hated 'Home Alone 2'!

Honestly, I didn’t expect much from this sequel. Indeed, since I was not really impressed by the first installment, there was a good chance that this 2nd movie would be even more underwhelming. Eventually, I have to admit it, the premise was actually alright and there was definitely some potential but, once again, I thought that Macaulay Culkin or the character he was portraying was actually pretty annoying so I really had hard time to care about the whole thing. Still, all in all, I guess it was somehow rather watchable but I seriously don’t really get the appeal of those movies. Eventually, even though this sequel was highly successful at the box-office and even though it is almost as well regarded as the classic first installment, I thought that the whole thing was rather average and actually pretty boring. It might be enjoyable for young kids so maybe I should have watched it 20 years earlier, I don’t know. To conclude, I didn’t really like this flick and in spite of its pretty good reputation, I don’t think it is really worth a look, expect probably if you are a fan of the previous installment which I'm obviously not.

"You can mess with a lot of things, but you can't mess with kids on Christmas."

When Home Alone was released in 1990 and grossed more than $470 million at the worldwide box office, a sequel was inevitable due to Hollywood's habitual business mindset. The reality, though, is that 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York merely comes across as an unoriginal, ridiculous, almost superfluous cash-in on the success of its predecessor. It rehashes practically everything from the first film, and thus creativity is at an all-time low. With that said, though, it's pretty easy to see why Home Alone 2 appealed to kids (including this reviewer, who loved it as a sprog). It may not retain much of the magic of the original film, but it's still a thoroughly enjoyable and often hilarious instance of Christmastime entertainment.

Once again, the film is set at Christmas, and the extended McCallister family are planning a vacation to Miami, Florida. Unfortunately, prior to the trip, young Kevin McCallister (Culkin) gets himself into trouble and has a fight with his brother. During the shuffle at the airport the following morning, Kevin boards the wrong plane and finds himself all alone in New York City. Yet, Kevin finds this to be a godsend. Before you can say "child neglect", Kevin scams his way into getting a luxurious suite at an expensive hotel while his family collectively frets in Florida. Little does Kevin realise that robbers Harry (Pesci) and Marv (Stern) - the "Wet Bandits" - have busted out of prison after being arrested at the end of the first film, and have made their way to the Big Apple to rob a large toy store. After a chance encounter with the burglars (the whole plot is built on happenstance, by the way), Kevin decides to save the targeted toy store and give the criminals a night they'll never forget using a bunch of his trademark booby traps.

At a mammoth 120 minutes, Home Alone 2 was padded to breaking point with recycled jokes, saccharine Christmas-spirit references, and even a bit of product placement. Not to mention, there are a lot of hard-to-swallow contrivances throughout the narrative. On top of the fact that Kevin ends up alone again (the permutations involved in how this happens are beyond unbelievable), Kevin also meets the same two burglars from the first movie in the dense expanse of NYC when they both go to the same toy store on the same day at the same time. Also unbelievable is the fact that the 10-year-old Kevin takes charge and ingeniously tricks adults in one of the world's largest cities. Then again, this is a film in which a bloke quickly recovers after being hit in the face with four bricks tossed from the roof of a three-story building. Needless to say, the implausibility pill is hard to swallow.

The death of John Hughes in 2009 was tragic. During his career, he was responsible for several timeless classics, including Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, and Planes, Trains & Automobiles. However, Home Alone 2 is nowhere near the quality that Hughes is typically known for - the writer's creativity was running on empty here. Practically everything that occurs in the original Home Alone also happens in this sequel, from Kevin's family watching a foreign-dubbed version of It's a Wonderful Life to a misunderstood stranger whom Kevin befriends. Admittedly, however, the different scenery is a welcome change of pace, and the jokes are at least clever enough to garner a few guffaws. Of course, the script eventually puts Kevin in a position to thwart the burglars, leading to a prolonged climax in the same vein as the original film. All of the Three Stooges-style antics which take place at the film's climax are far more brutal and extreme than anything seen in the first Home Alone - a lot of the stuff here should have killed Harry and Marv, or led to serious injury worthy of hospitalisation. Of course, none of this critical examination matters if you only care about the slapstick sight gags and a Looney Tunes level of insanity. To be certain, there are lots of laugh-out-loud moments scattered throughout the movie to keep one entertained.

Amidst the cartoon violence, Macaulay Culkin's childhood charm still carries the film. As with the original movie, Culkin is a convincing star with a likeable screen presence. Meanwhile, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are highly entertaining as Harry and Marv, even if they solely exist to be human crash test dummies in the film. Pesci is particularly amusing while he mumbles family-friendly PG curses. And Stern - with wild-eyed, maniacal glee - is a hilarious imbecile who deserves his own hour-long episode of World's Dumbest Criminals. A host of supporting players are also present in the movie. Where the late great John Candy made a wonderful cameo appearance in the first film, Donald Trump and Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club) briefly appear here. Additionally, Tim Curry is amusing as the concierge at the New York hotel, while Rob Schneider also appears as a bellboy. Rounding out the cast is Brenda Fricker who's a standout as a mysterious pigeon lady, while Catherine O'Hara and John Heard are both believable as Kevin's parents.

At the end of the day, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is an adequate sequel which provides a few hearty laughs, and it will pleasantly pass a couple of hours. Admittedly, though, it's not nearly as special, creative or well-crafted as the original. I guess this is the type of sequel that's made when the original film was nothing deep or profound. The producers were perhaps at a loss as to what made Home Alone such a phenomenal success, so no box was left unchecked in trying to recapture the magic and essence of the original film. Fortunately for the producers, Home Alone 2 earned big bucks at the box office, and - unfortunately for us - this led to Home Alone 3 in 1997.

6.2/10

The sequel surprised me because there are some sequels in family films that aren't very good but this one was really good. One thing where I enjoyed this one but not as much as the first one was pretty much the whole plot was the same all over again with almost the exact same events occuring. I think that is where some people might not be that fond of this one because of the plot being pretty much the same. I think that is something that most people love about the Home Alone series like every time it is experienced on TV, it must be a hilarious yet quite scary experience in real life. The endings of both films are pretty much the same but in different environments and different problems but Kevin still has the same problem. The only difference is that it is Kevin is in Manhattan New York and has to look after himself and also some of the traps that Kevin sets up for Harry and Marv are quite different too whereas there are very few that are the same. If they were all the same, the film would've been an ultimate failer. If they made it slightly different, it could have been a bit better than the first one but because it was pretty much the same of everything as the first one it didn't seem as brilliant. It is a wacky coincidence that in all of the Home Alone films that the main child character in the film gets lost or goes missing every Christmas. Like I said in my review of this first film: The traps that Kevin sets for Harry and Marv are so dangerous and they hurt themselves so badly like falling down the stairs, falling of buildings, slipping off ladders etc, you could just think "How are they not dead?" The stunts and traps in this one are more dangerous because there is fire used, lots of tins and a lot of falling too.


Macaulay Culkin's return as Kevin was a fantastic one. He is still playing that over-intelligent young child who seems to know everything. Sometimes, he doesn't even seem to be real because of the unusual intelligence of the child at such a young age. It seems like it's a person with a 10-year-old body but the brain of a 17/18-year-old. Just like before, he wasn't that bothered when he lost his family again but as time drags on and especially when Harry and Marv come into the picture he begins to really miss them and wish they were with him. Culkin was 10-years-old in the first film but is 12-years-old in the second film but to be perfectly honest he doesn?t look or behave any different and neither does the Kevin character. Just like in the first film, there is someone Kevin becomes freaked out by at the start but when he speaks to them properly he becomes good friends with them. It was Marley in the first one and the Bird Lady who both help Kevin fight off Harry and Marv in each of the films. Joe Pesci and David Stern return once again as Harry and Marv. I worked it out that David Stern is exactly a foot taller than Joe Pesci. They both remind me a lot of Horace and Jasper in 101 Dalmatians: one short and fat and the other really tall and skinny. Harry's surname is Lime. Harry Lime is a very famous character in the classic film The Third Man. Marv's surname is Merchants. We find out their surnames in the sequel not in the first film. Catherine O'Hara made another irritating return as Kate McCallister.


Chris Columbus directs another brilliant Home Alone film and doesn't fail in the slightest. I am glad that Columbus only directed the first two because if he directed the third and fourth without Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, David Stern and Catherine O'Hara starring it, I think that Columbus' great works of the Home Alone films would have been a massive waste.


Home Alone 2: Lost In New York is another brilliant Home Alone film that I really enjoyed but isn't as good as the first one. The first one is better than the second by about a mile. Home Alone 2: Lost In New York is a really exciting, hilarious sequel to a family phenomenon that I really enjoyed watching.